My, how time flies. Is seems like just yesterday that Wisconsin Democrats suffered consecutive electoral setbacks, only to press forward with their costly recall effort against Scott Walker, undeterred.  Now the big day is less than a week away, and liberals are already explaining why whatever happens won't really matter all that much:
 

Democratic National Committee Chairwoman Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz (D-Fla.) insisted in a television interview that a loss for the Democratic candidate in the recall, Milwaukee Mayor Tom Barrett, wouldn’t have any implications for other races, such as the presidential election. “I think, honestly, there aren’t going to be any repercussions,” Wasserman Schultz said on C-SPAN’s “Newsmakers” program. “It’s an election that’s based in Wisconsin.”

Yeah, Debbie.  "Honestly."  Here's liberal columnist Steve Kornacki arguing essentially the same point:
 

So, given this polarized, high-interest climate, if the numbers end up breaking the GOP’s way on June 5, how could it not be some kind of harbinger for the fall? Actually, there’s a good reason to think it won’t be: The same polls that have Walker well-positioned to fend off Barrett don’t give Romney quite the same strength. The most recent public survey, released last week by St. Norbert College and Wisconsin Public Radio, put Walker ahead 50 to 45 percent in the recall race and Obama up 49 to 43 percent on the presidential side.

To his credit, Kornacki does point out that another poll showing the presidential race tied in the Badger State, at 46-46.  Even so, this surge in feigned ambivalence from the Left could be the surest sign yet that Walker's a lock for, um, "re-election."  I can't help but shake the suspicion that if Barrett shocks the world and wins, liberals will be overcome with the fresh realization that Walker's defeat is one of the most important indicators in American political history.  But for now, with things looking bleak, "meh" is carrying the day.  Make no mistake: The Left -- and especially organized labor -- desperately wants to oust Walker.  He campaigned as a conservative, has governed as a conservative, and has thrown the breaks on the nasty little taxpayer-funded union/Democrat gravy train racket that's been running for decades.  His reforms are working, and people are noticing, even in a state that hasn't voted for a Republican presidential candidate since before I was born.  If Walker's bold, riot-triggering reforms are affirmed by voters next week, it will be a very dark day indeed for a core Democrat constituency.  But is DWS right?  Would a Walker victory auger almost nothing about the presidential race?  I discussed that question on Neil Cavuto's Fox News show earlier in the week, and reached something of a split decision:
 

In short, the presidential year electorate in Wisconsin will differ from the group that turns out on Tuesday, probably to Barack Obama's benefit, but state Republicans are getting a whole lot of practice motivating and turning out their voters in droves.  Remember this?  Plus, George W. Bush barely lost Wisconsin twice; could Romney finally flip it red, in light the red tide that has swamped the state over the last two years?  We'll see soon enough.  Task one: Fortify Walker and give his important reforms an unambiguous vote of confidence.  The lasting impact of that outcome on future conservative reformers would be monumental -- regardless of whether Wisconsin becomes a swing state in November.

UPDATE - This just arrived in my inbox, via a pro-Walker group.  They're not bashful about making this a national issue and linking it directly to the presidential race:
 

Before the 2012 elections, conservatives need a reason to believe we can beat Barack Obama. That is why we are forwarding Scott Walker's latest email to you. With the Wisconsin Recall election on June 5th, Governor Walker needs our help.

UPDATE II - Here's Team Walker's latest ad against Barrett, who is coming under fire for the Milwaukee Police Department's apparent goosing of crime stats (via Ed Morrissey):
 

UPDATE III - For a recap on Friday's Walker/Barrett debate, the Standard's John McCormack has you covered.  I watched a fair amount of it on C-SPAN, too.  Barrett looked desperate, and Walker never broke a sweat.  My favorite bit was the Democrat's comments about ending the "civil war" in Wisconsin.  This from the nominee of the party that has been pushing expensive sore loser, do-over elections for two straight years.

Credit where it's due: After prematurely declaring Elizabeth Warren's Native American flap "over" in early May, the Boston Globe has joined its crosstown rival in investigating the matter.  Today's edition features a front page story on the subject, packed with new information, as well as some useful context:
 

US Senate candidate Elizabeth Warren has said she was unaware that Harvard Law School had been promoting her purported Native American heritage until she read about it in a newspaper several weeks ago. But for at least six straight years during Warren’s tenure, Harvard University reported in federally mandated diversity statistics that it had a Native American woman in its senior ranks at the law school. According to both Harvard officials and federal guidelines, those statistics are almost always based on the way employees describe themselves.

In addition, both Harvard’s guidelines and federal regulations for the statistics lay out a specific definition of Native American that Warren does not meet. The documents suggest for the first time that either Warren or a Harvard administrator classified her repeatedly as Native American in papers prepared for the government in a way that apparently did not adhere to federal diversity guidelines. They raise further questions about Warren’s statements that she was unaware Harvard was promoting her as Native American.

Allahpundit gets a kick out of Warren claiming that she has "made all the facts clear."  That statement is roughly 0/32 true:
 

Finally, Warren said, “I am proud of my family and I am proud of my heritage.”

Hiller followed up: “Does it include an Indian background?”

Warren replied, “Yes.”

“How do you know that?” Hiller asked.

Warren responded, “Because my mother told me so. This is how I live. My mother, my grandmother, my family. This is my family. Scott Brown has launched attacks on my family. I am not backing off from my family.”

No, Scott Brown has not "launched attacks" on Warren's family. What a desperate assertion.  He has asked her to explain why she described her family for years as Native American, when she cannot provide any proof to that effect.  Don't lie about your ethnicity year after year as you climb a career ladder.  Seems like a pretty reasonable standard, no?  Democrats are eagerly pointing to a new Suffolk University poll that shows Brown's lead down to just 1 point, suggesting that the faux Native American controversy hasn't hurt Warren at all.  A few nuggets from that survey:
 

Seventy-two percent of likely voters were aware of the recent controversy concerning Elizabeth Warren’s heritage. Of those, 49 percent said Warren was telling the truth about being part Native American; 28 percent said she was not telling the truth; and 23 percent weren’t sure. Meanwhile, 41 percent said they believed that Elizabeth Warren benefited by listing herself as a minority, while 45 percent said she did not benefit. Sixty-nine percent of likely voters said that Warren’s Native American heritage listing is not a significant story, while 27 percent said that it is…

This is a non-story to most Massachusetts voters.  For now.  But I think WaPo's The Fix has it right: This is a slow-drip scandal (apparently with more "shoes to drop") that won't seem to go away.  Nearly half of those surveyed said they think Warren's self-identification helped her professionally, even as 49 percent say they believe her root claim.  As stories like this continue to pile up, and Warren refuses to answer basic questions, the public may become more skeptical of her veracity.  In any case, this is not the story she wants to be talking about as voters form impressions of her.  And histrionics about "attacks" on her family won't a single person who doesn't want to be fooled.

As I said earlier in the week, if The One really wants to get into it on issue of deficits and debt, bring it on.  Here's his latest bit of breaktaking historical revisionism, via Greg:
 

“I don’t know how they've been bamboozling folks into thinking that they are the responsible, fiscally-disciplined party. They run up these wild debts and then when we take over we have to clean it up.”

Ah yes, the Republicans have somehow "bamboozled folks" into thinking that Obama and the Democrats are the true purveyors of "wild debts."  How ever might people get that impression?  Perhaps the current, unprecedented spending spree has something to do with it.  I realize that liberals have hungrily consumed a recent, comprehensively phony "analysis" positing that Obama has ushered in a new age of austerity, or whatever, but even marginally attached voters can understand how bogus that is.  This president took the reins admist a turbulent time of economic collapse, resulting in multiple "temporary" spending measures.  He has institutionalized these sharply increased "emergency" spending levels as the new normal, and has presided over four consecutive trillion-dollar-plus annual deficits.  Prior to this presidency, the United States had never had a single $1,000,000,000,000 deficit.  We've now had four in a row; every last one orchestrated by the guy who pledged to have sliced the deficit in half by now.  In some ways, Obama's characterization of Republican spending as "wild debts" isn't entirely off base.  Over President Bush's two terms, he piled more than $4 trillion onto national debt, and the GOP controlled Congress for several years of that span (although the worst years came at the end of his second term, when Congressional Democrats held the purse strings).  Candidate Obama called Bush's record on debt "unpatriotic:"
 

Candidate Obama has since added over $5 Trillion to the national debt as President Obama, in less than half the time -- and Democrats held Congress from 2007 to 2011.  Who's going "wild" here, Mr. President?  Fun reminder: Our spending is going to hit the debt ceiling again within the year, possibly before the election.  I'll leave you with this fact-check from the Washington Post, which punctures White House Press Secretary Jay Carney's peevish rant about conservatives' supposed "BS" on Obama's spending record.  Three Pinnochios.

UPDATE - In the same speech last night, Obama complained about negative campaigning.  The hypocrisy.  It hurts.  Even Politico isn't impressed with Obama's campaign thus far, writing that he's "stumbled out of the gate."

This data set is from a Republican-aligned polling firm, but still.  Whoa:
 

Poll type:: Automated Date: 5/23/2012 - Participants: 1,409 Likely Voters - Margin of Error: ± 2.61%

Point: The Democrat only bests New Hitler by three points among public union households?  C'mon. Counterpoint: The sample size is more than legit for a state-level poll, and the MOE is rather low...so is gut-level incredulity enough to wave these results off?  In any case, what lessons might we derive these numbers?  First off, it's unquestionably an outlier, so don't pop the cork just yet.  Most other polls peg Walker's lead at 5 or 6 points, although another survey released this week shows Walker's advantage swelling to eight.  Plus, the miniscule percentage of undecided voters tracks closely with other polling, so that also checks out.  Though I'm extremely dubious that Walker is on track to hammer Barrett by 12 points (double his 2010 victory margin), I'm willing to buy that his lead could be creeping into commanding territory.  He's got all the momentum:  Not only is Barrett dealing with the major headache of explaining allegedly gamed violent crime statistics in Milwaukee, Walker's been buoyed with favorable news.  As we reported last week, official jobs figures now show that the state has added 33,000 net jobs since Walker took office last year, and a new study confirms that Walker's controversial reforms have saved Wisconsin taxpayers $1 Billion:
 

Act 10, which curbed collective bargaining for most unionized public employees, in the whole has saved taxpayers more than $1 billion, according to The Economic Impacts of the Wisconsin Budget Repair Act. The study is slated for release this week by Beacon Hill Institute, a prominent free market think tank. What the analysis found is that without the law, which in part requires covered public employees to contribute more to their benefits and holds wage increases to the rate of inflation, Badger State governments would have been forced to raise taxes or make deep job cuts to meet budget expenses.

Now is not the time for Wisconsin conservatives to rest on their laurels, but this information could very well buttress the popularity of Walker's reform package -- which is what sparked recall mania in the first place, in case you'd forgotten.  (Democrats seem to be trying to make this election about everything but collective bargaining "rights," which is telling in and of itself).  A recent Marquette Law School poll shows that a majority of state residents support the substance of Walker's changes, and independent voters -- some of whom comprise the tiny contingent of undecided voters -- favor Act 10's policy provisions by a resounding 15 points.  Strike a resounding blow for responsible governance and finish this, Badgerites. 

First, here's the spot:
 

Now, three quick thoughts:

(1) Some of the initial outrage on Twitter indicated that O's campaign used actual footage from the Bin Laden raid in the ad, but I don't think that's the case.  Nevertheless, the grainy night-vision footage is obviously intended to evoke imagery of the Abbottabad mission.  Message sent: Don't forget who was president when we got OBL, America.

(2) After Team Obama's tawdry and baseless assertions that President Romney wouldn't have pulled the trigger on bin Laden, it's hard for me to get too worked up over this.  Who knows?  Maybe I've just become desensitized to their shameless endzone dancing.  Plus, they at least packaged their politicizing of this stuff as a (deserved) tribute to our troops and veterans this time around.

(3) I guess I simply don't have a big problem with Obama crowing a little bit about the Big Get.  He and President Bush share political credit for getting this job done, but Obama happens to be the guy running for re-election.  And in this case, he's also more than sharing the spotlight with the those who literally risked their necks -- which is a lot more significant than making a call from Washington, no matter how gutsy.

Okay, what say you?  Is this relatively inoffensive, or is my outrage meter broken? 

UPDATE - This is one of two new positive ads Obama's rolled out this week.  The other one is about, er, Medicare; you know, the entitlement program that's hurtling towards insolvency, and that Democrats have no plan to save.  Terrific.  To counter the Dems' $25 million ad barrage this month, a conservative SuperPAC is answering with a huge swing state media buy of its own:
 

The best part?  This poll was commissioned by the very newspaper that ran the now-infamous 5,500-word 'bully' story on its front page a few weeks ago.  Sorry, WaPo -- voters aren't buying what you're selling.  Hit piece fail:
 

Most Americans by far dismiss the relevance of accusations that Mitt Romney bullied a high-school classmate, calling it off-point in the election debate – and indicating they’d say the same about Barack Obama’s behavior as a high-school student, as well. Three-quarters in this ABC News/Washington Post poll say the account of Romney’s high school behavior is not a serious matter, about as many say it doesn’t provide relevant information on his character, and nearly all – 90 percent – say it’s not a major factor in their vote preference.

The public also bristles at the very approach of the press investigating a candidate's teenage exploits, an overwhelming distaste that cuts across partisan lines:
 

Most Americans, in any case, see the general approach as inappropriate: Seventy-five percent in this poll...say it’s unfair to bring up things a political candidate did in high school. Given the context of the bullying story, 89 percent of Republicans say so; that slips to 73 percent of independents and 66 percent of Democrats. Further, 72 percent think the specific bullying incident, first reported by The Washington Post, does not provide useful information about Romney’s character. That, too, engenders partisan divisions: Almost all Republicans (94 percent) think the incident isn’t relevant; 71 percent of independents and 59 percent of Democrats agree.

Incidentally, this data is mined from the same national survey that gave Democrats a ludicrous ten point sample advantage, resulting in The One's thin lead over Romney.  So the public's rejection of the Post's advocacy journalism is probably even more comprehensive than even the 90 percent (!) figure indicates.  With the Obama campaign's Bain crusade backfiring, the press is going to have to dig harder to help sink Romney.  Their failure to accomplish this task thus far clearly isn't due to lack of effort.  Come on, guys, the American people demand more hot scoops on Ann Romney's former horses, the Romney family's Irish Setter circa 1983, and the actions of rogue Mormon militias in the mid-19th Century.

President Obama said this week that Mitt Romney's record as a wealth and job creator vampire-like corporate raider at Bain Capital will be the crux of the fall campaign.  Team Romney calls out the incumbent for his wishful thinking in a new web ad, which offers a stark reminder of what the 2012 contest will actually be about:
 

Unemployment has been above eight percent for 39 straight months.  "Real" unemployment remains close to 15 percent.  The workforce participation rate is at a three-decade low.  Corrosive, chronic unemployment drags on for millions of Americans.  Foreclosures continue to pile up.  And the national debt is fast approaching $16 Trillion, with no signs of receding.  This is the Obama legacy, which is why he's intent on directing the national conversation toward a handful of failed investments at Bain Capital, while willfully ignoring the company's superb overall track record.  It's not working.  The polls and members of the president's own party demonstrate as much.  Is Romney's messaging on unemployment, debt and decline starting to break through?  A new poll shows the Republican leaping ahead of Obama in the key swing state of Florida:
 

Gov. Mitt Romney holds a 47 – 41 percent lead over President Barack Obama in Florida, where 63 percent of voters say the president’s support of same-sex marriage will not affect their vote, according to a Quinnipiac University poll released today.  Romney’s lead in the horse race compares to a 44 – 43 percent tie in a May 3 survey by the independent Quinnipiac University and a 49 – 42 percent Obama lead March 28. Florida registered voters say 52 – 44 percent that the president does not deserve a second term in the Oval Office and by 52 – 44 percent give him a thumbs-down on his job approval.

Somewhat astonishingly, the Obama campaign's rapid response director has proactively raised the issue of debt in her twitter feed.  Since she's working for the undisputed debt king, one would think she'd do everything within her power to avoid the topic.  I guess not.  She tried to paint Romney as a reckless accuer of debt, and failed spectacularly.  Not only did Romney transform Massachusetts' $3 billion deficit into a $2 billion rainy day fund without raising taxes (though he did raise some fees), the Washington Post's fact-checker confirms that he "significantly slowed" the rate of debt accumulation in the state.  Glenn Kessler also explains that state and federal debt are two very different beasts, and even in a convoluted head-to-head comparison, Romney's debt record is far better than Obama's.  The paper awarded the Obama camp Three Pinnochios for its misleading claims.  But by all means, Team Obama, please make debt and deficits a big issue this fall.  I dare you.

UPDATE - Guess who appointed two "vampire capitalists" to his jobs council?
 

Are “job destroyers” sitting on President Obama’s jobs council? There could be, if you believe the argument from Democrats and the Obama campaign that private equity executives are profit seekers who often run roughshod over workers, companies and communities. Two Obama-appointed members of the White House Council on Jobs and Competitiveness, an advisory committee, are leading figures in the private equity industry.

Surprise!

A follow-up on Katie's post from this morning, which covered all the buzz words -- new tone, war on women, etc -- but who are we kidding?  We all know that those rules only apply to Republicans.  In case you missed it below, here's South Carolina's outgoing AFL-CIO president, Donna Dewitt, repeatedly taking a metal bat to a pinata adorned with an image of Republican Gov. Nikki Haley's face.  Especially classy are the shouts from lookers-on, encouraging Dewitt "hit her again!"  I eagerly await an explanation of how this was somehow inspired by the Tea Party's "climate of hate," or whatever:
 

Any regrets over this lovely display, Donna?  Nah.  As Dennis Prager has said for years, being a liberal means never having to say you're sorry:
 

Dewitt told ABC News she has no regrets about incident and said there was "no ill intent" in what she was doing.  Dewitt said her colleagues brought the pinata and were using it as a "memoir" of Haley's words and actions towards unions in her time as governor..."We've been the brunt of her comments now for two years and that's what the whole thing was.  She's been whacking at us over the last two years," Dewitt, who has been president of the South Carolina AFL-CIO for the past 16 years and will retire at the end of June, continued.

An email from the national AFL-CIO expressed some concern over the video -- not because sends the wrong message, but because it could do political damage:
 

“Do you think we can get this video pulled,” asked a national AFL-CIO official in an email to Palmetto State union sources. The author of the email also worried the video might get “picked up by tea partiers, maybe even Haley herself, to attack labor again.”

I wonder how many broadcast hours MSNBC would devote to this "deeply troubling" manifestation of "right-wing violence" if it were a conservative activist teeing off on a photo of, say, Kathleen Sebelius.  Maybe they'd even edit out the fact that Dewitt is a female, allowing them to hype their chosen "war on women" narrative.  In fact, I'd bet Mitt Romney would be asked to denounce it, probably within an hour of the clip going viral.  I'll leave you with the third ranking House Democrat blathering about Mitt Romney's "raping" of companies during his time at bain.  I skimmed past the quote in a post yesterday but figured it was worth including video of this productive contribution to the Party of Ideas' precious "civility:"
 

Note well Clyburn's self-congratulatory remark that he doesn't take contributions from "payday lenders."  Oops.

The good news?  The One wasn't shown up by a convicted felon this time around.  The bad news?  He still failed to secure supermajorities in a pair of virtually uncontested presidential primaries last night.  In Kentucky, Obama won only 58 percent of Democrats, with 42 percent of his party's voters casting ballots for "uncommitted" over a sitting president.  In Arkansas, an obscure attorney took a similar share of the primary vote from Obama.  But as the Washington Post will tell you, a massacre perpetrated by a Mormon militia in 1857 might be "problematic" for Mitt Romney down in Razorback country this fall.  Or something.  As fun as these symbolic anti-Obama tallies may be, I'm not sure how predictive they are in looking ahead to November.  I suppose I wouldn't want to be a Democrat down-ticket from Obama in either of these states, although his humiliation in West Virginia a few weeks back probably won't prevent his lapdog Sen. Joe Manchin from winning re-election on the same day the state goes heavily for Romney. 

Speaking of Romney, he inched ever closer to the magic nomination number on Tuesday, pulling within 89 delegates of hitting the requisite 1,144 mark.  He'll probably clinch things officially in the Texas primary next week.  One item of note from the GOP side of things: The former Massachusetts Governor carried 67 percent of the primary vote in Kentucky.  Rep. Ron Paul barely attracted 12 percent.  But because Paul stopped actively campaigning a few weeks ago, it's less of a story that he got smashed in the state his son, Rand Paul, represents in the US Senate.  As he cruised to a duo of primary victories, Romney made a lucrative fundraising swing in New York, and is expected to pull in millions more later this week at Boston-area events.

Half-truths and partisan dissembling are regular features in American politics, and neither side is blameless in the endless spin cycle.  To paraphrase the late Sen. Daniel Patrick Moynihan, everyone is entitled to his own opinion -- not his own facts.  Democrats seem to be working harder than usual to invent and misconstrue facts for political advantage.  Let's run through today's distortions and flat-out lies:  (1) An Obama spokesman claimed on CNN that the campaign did not reach out to (fleeting) Democratic apostate Cory Booker to, ahem, "encourage" him to walk back his problematic comments on Sunday's Meet the Press.  Except...Booker himself has said the opposite, and NBC's Chuck Todd reported that "multiple conversations" took place:
 

This is a relatively inconsequential dust-up, of course, but it illustrates a larger point: Team Obama is willing to insult voters' collective intelligence and lie in order to make Booker's "change of heart" seem authentic.  Everyone understands what happened here.  Booker spoke his mind, violating a sacrosanct campaign talking point in doing so. He was then upbraided and pressured into "clarifying" his point, and as a loyal foot soldier, he complied.  To pretend otherwise isn't credible, which is why Labolt's grimacing and awkward tale is painful to watch.  Verdict: Highly-parsed lie.

(2) The Democratic National Committee tweeted this whopper today:
 

RT @TheDemocrats: Under President Obama, government spending is at the lowest level in nearly 60 years. http://j.mp/MDK69n

Excuse me?  First of all, the tendentious piece they link to argues that the rate of spending increase under Obama is the slowest its been since the 1950s, which is a separate claim from the laughable assertion Debbie Wasserman Schultz's shop tweeted out.  The column fails to take into account that Obama has made permanent, and is building off of, "emergency" spending levels that he himself has supported -- both as a Senator (TARP) and as president (the stimulus).  Thus any measure of his "slow" rate of growth is highly misleading, due to the historically-inflated baseline from which he started.  So in context, it's a bogus statistic, but at least it's rooted in some degree of reality.  What the Democrats spun this into is the howler that "government spending is at the lowest level" in many decades under this administration.  Forget the fact that Obama has presided over four straight trillion-dollar-plus annual deficits.  Forget that he's added more to the national debt than the first 41 presidents (and change) combined.  Forget that his reckless budgets propose to pour trillions more into America's red sea.  Just look at this chart, and try to reconcile it with the statement advanced by the Democrat Party this afternoon:
 

Verdict: Flagrant, pants-on-fire lie.  Say what you will about DWS, she certainly sets the tone over at the DNC.

(3) President Obama's SuperPAC -- which still has not returned its $1 million donation from serial misogynist and Mormon-baiter Bill Maher -- is up with a new ad slamming Mitt Romney's wicked doings at Bain Capital:
 

The company this woman worked for, Ampad, went under in January 2000 -- almost a year after Mitt Romney left Bain Capital to save the Winter Olympics.  Yes, Romney was there when the initial investment occurred, but he was far less involved in the firm's management of Ampad than someone else who curiously escaped scrutiny in the ad (via ABC News):
 

Here’s what the Obama Web video doesn’t mention: A top Obama donor and fundraiser had a much more direct tie to the controversy and actually served on the board of directors at Richardson, Texas-based Ampad, which makes office paper products. Jonathan Lavine is a long-time Bain Capital executive and co-owner of the Boston Celtics. He is also one of President Obama’s most prolific fundraisers. He has already raised more than $200,000 for the Obama campaign this election, according to Federal Election Commission records. Lavine started working for Bain in 1993. He was one of three Bain executives who served on the board of directors of Ampad for several years, a post he held until 1999. Here’s a news release announcing his departure from the company in April 1999. Lavine’s placement on the board of Ampad suggests he had a more direct role than Romney in the series of events surrounding the layoffs, labor disputes and eventual bankruptcy of the Marion, Ind., factory featured in the Obama campaign video.

Well, well, well.  What tangled webs they weave.  In this case, the Obama backers' sin is one of omission -- harping on Bain's relatively few instances of failure, while refusing to acknowledge their own ally's outsized role in this highlighted incident.  Overall, Bain Capital's record was exemplary.  Don't ask me, or Cory Booker, or Steve Rattner, or Harold Ford Jr...ask Democrat Senator Mark Warner:
 

Boy, this Bain stuff is really unraveling, huh?  No matter.  They've got to keep plucking this chicken; The One has pronounced it a central issue of the campaign.  Verdict: Intentionally incomplete dishonesty.

UPDATE - While we're on the subject of Democrats and lies, here's the most hilarious defense of alleged plagiarist and faux Native American Elizabeth Warren I've seen to date:
 

Warren's claim to be "part Indian" is correct in mythical terms. Every old-school white Oklahoman is in this regard even if this in nominally not true. But it is not a lie to want to be Indian and to imagine your ancestors were. It is to be free of Europeanism... I hope Elizabeth Warren doesn't back down on this, because wanting to be Indian, like Hawkeye, makes us in a deeper sense fully American.

What about confusing that very special desire with the truth, and exploiting it for professional advantage?  Is that "mythically" correct, as well?  Verdict: Ha!

Celebrate good times, liberals -- President Obama has again vaulted ahead of Mitt Romney in a national poll:
 

After months of aggressive campaigning on jobs and the economy, President Obama and Mitt Romney, his likely Republican challenger, are locked in a dead heat over who could fix the problem foremost on voters’ minds, according to a new Washington Post-ABC News poll. The parity on economic issues foreshadows what probably will continue to be a tough and negative campaign. Overall, voters would be split 49 percent for Obama and 46 percent for Romney if the November election were held now. On handling the economy, they are tied at 47 percent.

Despite flare-ups over issues including contraception and same-sex marriage, more than half of all Americans cite the economy as the one concern that will decide their vote in the fall, relegating others — such as health care, taxes and the federal deficit — to single-digit status. More than eight in 10 Americans still rate the national economy negatively, but there are strains of optimism as it continues to recover from the collapse of 2008. A majority of Americans — 54 percent — say they are more hopeful than anxious about the situation over the next few years, while 58 percent are bullish about their financial prospects.

In this new survey, the president's job approval slipped back underwater (47/49), and his economic marks sank even further (42/55).  So how does Obama manage to pull ahead of Romney in the head-to-head match up in light of his eroded standing?  He gets by with a little help from his friend -- the WaPo/ABC News pollster.  Ed Morrissey blows the lid off of this survey's risible partisan sample:
 

Today’s D/R/I is 32/22/38, which means this model would only be predictive for a turnout model where only 22% of voters are Republican.  Just to remind readers, the 2008 turnout split from exit polls showed a 39/32/29 split, and that was considered a nadir for Republican turnout.  In the 2010 midterms, the split was 35/35/30.

Let's see if I understand this correctly.  WaPo/ABC News' sample handed Democrats a ten point edge (three points higher than 2008 -- a banner year for Democrats), and projected that Republicans would comprise less than a quarter of the electorate in November...and Romney is still within the margin of error?  This outcome has to be disconcerting for the Obama campaign, even as they put on a happy face over the top-line results.  It also may be time for the Washington Post and ABC News to start censoring their polling methodology again, because they're embarrassing themselves.  As I've written previously, the purpose of polling should be to accurately gauge public opinion; it should not be to manipulate the numbers to manufacture "good" news for your preferred candidate.  If the latter goal is the new standard, I'd be happy to roll out another IGB poll* showing Mitt Romney leading Obama by, let's say, 19 points among registered voters.  Useless, bias-massaging polls are fun, aren't they?  In any case, the Obama campaign's grand scheme to undermine Romney's advantage on the economy is to paint him as a "vampire capitalist" who destroyed businesses for profit.  (A top Democrat is now classily using rape imagery to demagogue Bain).  This idiotic attack strategy is been rebuffed by an expanding roster of Obama allies, the latest of whom is former Pennsylvania Governor Ed Rendell:
 

Rendell joined the chorus of criticism of Obama’s attacks on finance, whose leaders have written checks to many members of both parties. “I think they’re very disappointing,” Rendell said of the ads attacking Bain. “I think Bain is fair game, because Romney has made it fair game. But I think how you examine it, the tone, what you say, is important as well.” As for Booker, “I admire him,” Rendell said. “People in politics should tell the truth. He could have qualified it better, he could have framed it better, but if you’re in this business, none of us like negative ads.”

Maybe some Democrats are wary of these economically-illiterate and hypocritical criticisms because they've seen the fresh numbers from Rasmussen:
 

A new Rasmussen Reports national telephone survey finds that 44% of Likely U.S. Voters believe that Romney’s track record in business is primarily a reason to vote for him. Thirty-three percent (33%) see his business career as chiefly a reason to vote against him ... Fifty-five percent (55%) voters believe venture capital companies are better at creating jobs than government programs are.  Only 26% see government programs as better job creators. Nineteen percent (19%) are not sure. That’s essentially unchanged from January.

Obama has even lost his most devoted center-right sycophant on this issue. If you're still not convinced of O's epic Bain bust, Jennifer Rubin convincingly enumerates the persuasive evidence.  I'd posit that it might be time for Team O to go back to the drawing board, but what else do they have?  This is their gameplan.  Their entire re-election strategy is predicated on fear-mongering about Republican solutions, demonizing Mitt Romney's private sector experience, and pretending that Obama's record isn't a fetid ash heap of broken promises, economic hardship, suffocating debt, and demonstrable failure.  That last bit presents impossibly tough sledding, so more unresponsive, mindless campaign babble it is!  After all, this campaign "is going to be about" Bain Captial, come hell or high water -- so sayeth The One.  Oh goodie.

UPDATE - The latest NBC/WSJ poll has Obama up four over Romney overall, leading among Indies by eight, and even beating Romney with seniors.  I'm very skeptical of those last two data points, and Allahpundit notices another odd data point:
 

Last month’s WSJ poll had it 43D/39R/14I if you included leaners. The new poll: 44D/36R/16I. The spread between Democrats and Republicans has increased by four points since April — and yet O’s lead over Romney has shrunk by two points. Hmmmm.

Hmm, indeed.  Sample skews can be magical things, my friends.

*IGB is a polling firm that exists exclusively in this author's mind.  Methodology inquiries will be ignored.  Thank you.

This is a fight of the sore-loser Left's choosing, remember -- and it's one I've been begging them to pick since day one.  With Wisconsin's reckoning slated for two weeks from today, the recriminations among flustered Democrats are already flying:
 

The election has taken on significance beyond Wisconsin state politics: Organized labor sees the battle as a major stand against GOP efforts to scale back collective-bargaining rights for public-sector workers, as Mr. Walker did after taking office in 2011. Some Democrats now fear mobilizing Republicans to battle the recall could carry over to help the party—and Republican Mitt Romney—in November's presidential election...The Democratic National Committee and President Barack Obama's re-election campaign have emphasized their commitment to bolstering Mr. Barrett's campaign. They have offered help with volunteers and get-out-the-vote efforts, and Democratic National Committee Chairwoman Debbie Wasserman Schultz plans to travel to Wisconsin for a fundraiser with Mr. Barrett. But the national party turned down Wisconsin Democrats' request for $500,000, one party official said. For the left-leaning groups that have spent months trying to oust Mr. Walker, a loss would be a deflating end to a process that began with unions and their allies gathering more than 900,000 signatures to force a recall.

Top Democrats now say that when labor groups first raised the specter of a recall, the party's officials urged their allies in Wisconsin to reconsider. "We told them it was a bad, bad, bad idea," one Democratic official said. A union official said both the Democratic National Committee and the Obama campaign expressed reservations. "I don't know that anyone was enthusiastic about it over there," the union official said. Party leaders also counseled against pouring money into a contested primary ahead of the recall election, the Democratic official said. Mr. Barca, the Wisconsin Assembly minority leader, said he had heard rumblings about the DNC's displeasure with the recall. But Wisconsin residents weren't seeking approval from Washington, he said.

If Walker prevails, the Democrats are pre-telegraphing their ready-made excuse: Money.
 

Democrats say they haven't come close to matching the $25 million that the Wisconsin governor has raised. Mr. Barrett entered the race late and faced a primary election, during which labor-backed groups spent more than $5 million supporting a candidate they preferred, only to see her lose. By a late April filing date, Mr. Barrett had raised $831,000. "It feels like David vs. Goliath on the money front," said Peter Barca, the Democratic leader in Wisconsin's State Assembly, who said he was optimistic nonetheless about his party's chances.

Hey, maybe you guys should have agreed on a consensus candidate, rather than squandering millions on a contested primary, prior to the do-over election that you demanded.  Your biggest problem isn't fundraising, Democrats; it's that a majority of Wisconsinites agree with Gov. Walker's reforms.  I know that's a bitter pill to swallow at the moment, but it's the truth.  Despite the governor's favorable poll position, Weekly Standard editor and Badger State native Stephen Hayes quotes Walker as cautioning Republicans against complacency as the big day draws near:
 

Speaking to volunteers that afternoon at a Walker “victory center” in Waukesha, the governor acknowledges the new polls and his impressive showing in the primary and offers his supporters a word of caution. “Do not let apathy be the thing that defeats us on June 5,” he says, urging the volunteers to keep up their efforts. “There are a lot of hardworking taxpayers in this state who for the past 15, 16 months have been sitting on their hands and saying, ‘You know, I don’t need a bullhorn, I don’t need a protest sign, I can let my words be heard in the election, at the ballot box.’ We just need to make sure that all those voices show up on June 5.”

...A Barrett victory would establish a dangerous precedent. If the Democrats succeed in recalling a governor on policy differences, not malfeasance, the Republicans will likely respond in kind. “That’s why the recalls are such a joke,” says Walker. “That’s why putting the mayor in would be so ridiculous. In the next 12 months are we going to go through the same thing all over again? If we win, the lieutenant governor wins, if the senators win—I’ve got to believe that effectively puts an end to recalls in this state. If we lose, it becomes recall ping-pong. Back-and-forth and back-and-forth.”

Hayes succinctly states why Barrett and the organized Left is struggling so mightily to shift public opinion against the incumbent:
 

By virtually every objective measure, Walker has been an extraordinarily successful governor. In just 16 months, the state has erased a $3.6 billion budget deficit, and according to figures released this month by the Wisconsin Department of Revenue, it will have a $154.5 million surplus on June 30, 2013. Property taxes, which had risen by more than 40 percent since 1998, are down for the first time in years. The unemployment rate is down from 7.7 percent when Walker took office in January 2011 to 6.7 percent in April 2012. Last week, the state’s Department of Workforce Development released numbers showing that Wisconsin had gained some 23,000 jobs in 2011—correcting a misleading earlier report suggesting the state had lost more than 30,000 jobs over the same period. The subjective measures look good for Walker, too. On the stump, Walker is fond of citing Chief Executive magazine, which had ranked Wisconsin as the 41st-best state for business in 2010 and now ranks it 20th. Walker also points to a survey by Wisconsin Manufacturers and Commerce that found only 10 percent of business owners thought the state was headed in the right direction in 2010, while an eye-popping 94 percent think so today.

Even the liberal Milwaukee Journal Sentinel realizes the recall push is completely unwarranted.  Faced with this cascade of good news, Wisconsin Democrats have resorted to a series of political misdirection gambits, all of which have fallen flat.  And as they are wont to do, they've also been lying.  Reason TV examined three of their most misleading claims against Walker:
 

It's crunch time in Wisconsin; the aftershocks of the June 5th election will reverberate across the country.  Let's close the deal.

Maher's brand of bile is more overt than the preferred approach of his fellow media lefties, but subtlety was never Bill's modus operandi.  Via Twitter:
 

RT @billmaher: Why even listen to #MittRomney on foreign policy? His entire FP experience is 2 yrs trying to brow-beat Frenchmen into joining his cult

Quick reactions:

(1) Some liberals are already saying that because Maher is a militant, aggressive atheist, he views all religions as cults.  Has he called Barack Obama's Trinity United Church of Christ a "cult"?  I can't seem to recall that particular smear for some reason.

(2) David Axelrod said just yesterday that Mitt Romney's Mormonism is "off the table" for the fall campaign.  Will he encourage Obama's SuperPAC to return Maher's $1 million donation?

(3) But wait, you protest, the Obama campaign can't legally control the behavior and decisions of its Super PAC.  True.  Over to you, Bill Burton -- director of Obama's SuperPAC:
 

Priorities USA, a super-PAC that supports President Obama, won't touch on Mitt Romney's Mormonism in its attacks, the group's head told The Hill Monday morning. "We are ruling that out," Priorities USA senior strategist Bill Burton said. "I don't even see the point in engaging in this conversation too much. ... The campaign said they wouldn't engage on it. I haven't heard of any Democrat who has said that should be touched."

Now that he has clearly established that bigotry and religious fear-mongering have no place in the 2012 campaign, will Burton stamp "return to sender" on Maher's massive check?  If not, I don't want to hear one single peep from Obamaworld about Mitt Romney's lack of "moral leadership" in the realm of today's escalating politics of repudiation.

(4) Bill Maher is an insufferable hater who's been slamming Mormonism (and other faiths) for years.  He explicitly called Mitt Romney's church "a cult" last month:
 

Yeah, don't expect Billy B. to mail back that seven-figure check any time soon.  This is who Bill Maher is, and Team Obama knew it when they accepted his cash.  And by the way, Maher is dead wrong that Romney "only" donated to his church.  He's also given hefty sums to cancer and MS research organizations, charities for our troops, and children's groups.  And Romney's contributions to the Mormon church weren't just to help indigent Mormons, they were to help facilitate the church's philanthropic and humanitarian work around the world -- or as Maher would characterize it, "brow-beating poor people into benefiting from his cult."

UPDATE - No comment from Team Obama: "The Obama campaign did not respond to an e-mail from BuzzFeed asking whether they would repudiate Maher's remarks."

UPDATE II - Apparently the Obama campaign has offered a tepid rebuke without mentioning Maher by name.  They did not comment on the status of his large donation.

Let's face it: This spot became 100 percent inevitable the moment Cory Booker opened his mouth on Meet the Press, but its still nice to see the alacrity and skill with which Team Romney executed.  Behold, the official 'Democrats dissent from Obama's stupid anti-Bain demagoguery' campaign ad:
 

David Axelrod has slapped back at Booker, who hastily cut a hostage video-style (partial) retraction of his MTP remarks, but the damage has been done.  Every time The One comes after Romney on Bain, Republicans can cite three significant Obama supporters who have explicitly condemned his line of attack.  Bain itself has entered the fray, as well, pointing out that their track record is very strong indeed:
 

Bain shoots back: "During Bain Capital’s ownership, revenues grew in 80 percent of the more than 350 companies in which we have invested.”

So they're batting .800, in baseball parlance.  Can't have that now, can we?  And in case you were wondering, yes, the Romney campaign is also fundraising off of this kerfuffle.

UPDATE - ABC News says the Obama camp is in "full damage control mode" over its Bain attacks:
 

The Obama campaign is in full damage-control mode one day after Newark Mayor Cory Booker publicly derided Democrats’ assault on presumptive GOP nominee Mitt Romney over his record at Bain Capital. Chief Obama strategist David Axelrod today publicly rebuked Booker, a popular and high-profile surrogate for the campaign, saying he was “just wrong.”

If I were a dishonest liberal, I might loudly ask if a white man calling a black official "just wrong" is some sort of "racist dogwhistle."

Here's why David Axelrod can piously assure journalists that Mitt Romney's Mormonism is "off the table" for the Obama campaign this year: He knows the media and low level surrogates will cheerfully carry that toxic water on Team Obama's behalf.  The New York Times in particular seems to have an obsession with Romney's faith, having printed a steady stream of news stories, juvenile tweets and sneering columns on the subject.  Over the weekend, the Times published a 2,600 word examination of how Romney's beliefs have shaped his personal and public life.  Much of the story is straightforward and fair -- even crossing into sympathetic territory at points, but it also includes passages that are sure to terrify the Times' core audience of urbane secular leftists:
 

Being a Latter-day Saint is “at the center of who he really is, if you scrape everything else off,” said Randy Sorensen, who worshiped with Mr. Romney in church. As a young consultant who arrived at the office before anyone else, Mr. Romney was being “deseret,” a term from the Book of Mormon meaning industrious as a honeybee, and he recruited colleagues and clients with the zeal of the missionary he once was. Mitt and Ann Romney’s marriage is strong because they believe they will live together in an eternal afterlife, relatives and friends say, which motivates them to iron out conflicts. Mr. Romney’s penchant for rules mirrors that of his church, where he once excommunicated adulterers and sometimes discouraged mothers from working outside the home. He may have many reasons for abhorring debt, wanting to limit federal power, promoting self-reliance and stressing the unique destiny of the United States, but those are all traditionally Mormon traits as well.

Be very afraid of this officious, adulterer-excommunicating zealot, America!  (How many Americans will tremble over the "Mormon traits" of "abhorring debt, wanting to limit federal power, promoting self-reliance and stressing the unique destiny of the United States," I wonder?)  As for Romney's rigidity, the piece notes that while he operated "by the book" as a church elder, his penchant for compassion and creativity informed how he executed his duties:
 

Church officials say Mr. Romney tried to be sensitive and merciful; when a college student faced serious penalties for having premarital sex, Mr. Romney put him on a kind of probation instead. But he carried out excommunications faithfully. “Mitt was very much by the rules,” said Tony Kimball, who later served as his executive secretary in the church. Nearly two decades ago, Randy and Janna Sorensen approached Mr. Romney, then a church official, for help: unable to have a baby on their own, they wanted to adopt but could not do so through the church, which did not facilitate adoptions for mothers who worked outside the home. Devastated, they told Mr. Romney that the rule was unjust and that they needed two incomes to live in Boston. Mr. Romney helped, but not by challenging church authorities. He took a calculator to the Sorensen household budget and showed how with a few sacrifices, Ms. Sorensen could quit her job. Their children are now grown, and Mr. Sorensen said they were so grateful that they had considered naming a child Mitt. (The church has since relaxed its prohibition on adoption for women who work outside the home.)

The story also charts Romney's active prayer life and his ability to separate religious teachings from public policy stances.  As I said, the article is generally even-handed and informative, yet Breitbart's Joel Pollak makes a good point:
 

Needless to say, the Times has never held Obama to anything like the same standard. It ignored the racist teachings of Wright's Trinity United Church of Christ--of which Obama was well aware, despite protestations to the contrary--and fails to hold him to account when his actions violate the tenets of that bizarre, radicalized and racialized congregation. (Wright himself has not been shy in attributing Obama's perceived compromises to political expediency--as well as to "the Jews.")

Ed Morrissey illustrated this double standard last week:
 

Go to the New York Times website and do a 12-month search for “Romney Mormon,” and see how many hits come back.  I’ll end the suspense — “about 12,000 results,” according to the search I conducted earlier today.  Now, do a search on “Obama Jeremiah” in the same time frame, and you’ll get 4,190 hits, which is more than I expected but only about a third of the Romney-Mormon search results.  Actually, the same search only turns up 4,330 hits since 1851, which means that before mid-2011 the Times only had less than 200 hits for that search item.  The media has been asking questions about Romney’s faith all throughout this cycle’s 365 days, whether it has to do with polygamy (473 hits), racism (501 hits), contraception (265 hits), or contributions (2,040 hits). That’s more than article a day that mentions Romney, Mormon, and polygamy at once.

Not to be outdone, the Washington Post has churned out (yet another!) super-relevant story about a massacre perpetrated by a rogue Mormon militia....in 1857:
 

On Sept. 11, 1857, a wagon train from this part of Arkansas met with a gruesome fate in Utah, where most of the travelers were slaughtered by a Mormon militia in an episode known as the Mountain Meadows Massacre. Hundreds of the victims’ descendants still populate these hills and commemorate the killings, which they have come to call “the first 9/11.” Many of the locals grew up hearing denunciations of Mormonism from the pulpit on Sundays, and tales of the massacre from older relatives who considered Mormons “evil.” “There have been Fancher family reunions for 150 years, and the massacre comes up at every one of them,” said Scott Fancher, 58, who traces his lineage back to 26 members of the wagon train, which was known as the Fancher-Baker party. “The more whiskey we drunk, the more resentful we got.” There aren’t many places in America more likely to be suspicious of Mormonism — and potentially more problematic for Mitt Romney, who is seeking to become the country’s first Mormon president. Not only do many here retain a personal antipathy toward the religion and its followers, but they also tend to be Christian evangelicals, many of whom view Mormonism as a cult.

Really subtle, WaPo.  Thanks for that hot scoop.  In case you were curious, Romney leads Obama by 24 points in Arkansas.  "Problematic!"

UPDATE - An addendum: If the New York Times' rigorous deep-dive into Mitt Romney's church and religious belief system is fair game (and I'd say it is), why can't a Super PAC run truthful ads about Barack Obama's hateful pastor?  I think Romney was smart to disavow Wright as an issue for his campaign, but I'm not governed by Romney's preferences -- nor is an independent expenditure group.  For every thumb-sucking, transparent hit on Mormonism the MSM perpetrates over the next six months, maybe alternative media outlets should delve deeper into the theology and views spewed from the pulpit of Barack Obama's church for two decades.  Speaking of which, remember this?
 

"We cannot see that what we are doing his the same this Al Qaeda is doing under a different color flag!"

Finally, let's recall that the voters who are most likely to discriminate against Mormon candidates are Democrats:
 

Democrats are more likely to oppose a Mormon candidate in 2012 than Republicans, according to a new Gallup poll. Based on a poll of 1,020 adults, 27 percent of Democrats would vote against a Mormon candidate for president because of religion, compared with about 20 percent of Republicans and independents who said they would oppose such a candidate.

Last week, Jefferson Morley of Salon wrote a piece premised on the assertion that New Mexico Gov. Susana Martinez has committed Vice Presidential suicide by endorsing immigration reform:
 

“I absolutely advocate for comprehensive immigration reform,” Martinez  told reporter Andrew Romano. “Republicans want to be tough and say, ‘Illegals, you’re gone.’ But the answer is a lot more complex than that.” With those words, Martinez inflicted multiple wounds on whatever slender chance she had to join the national ticket. First, she indicated support for the immigration agenda that President Obama promises to pursue if he defeats Romney in November. Second, the reforms the 43-year-old first-term Republican favors are opposed by every Republican member of the Senate (even those like John McCain, who used to support it) and a solid majority in the House...In other words, the New Mexico governor is that now-rare national Republican figure who favors comprehensive immigration reform, otherwise known as amnesty.

Sources close to Martinez are repelled by the implication that she supports "amnesty."  They point to a position paper the governor authored on the subject during her successful 2010 campaign:
 

The federal government should lead on the issue of immigration reform, but they have not. While the president has called for comprehensive immigration reform and offered some vague principles, he has yet to propose a detailed plan. First and foremost, we have to secure the border and stop the flow of illegal immigration. It is not only dangerous, but also costly to our state. Each year, illegal immigration costs New Mexico millions. That is simply far more than we can afford in these times of extraordinary budget deficits and as more New Mexico families and small businesses are finding themselves in very difficult economic circumstances. Securing our border includes more boots on the ground and greater use of technology that allows us to monitor portions of the border which are extremely difficult to navigate. It is important that federal, state, and local law enforcement continue to work closely together to help secure our borders. The border security portion of immigration reform is critical, because no immigration plan can work if we have a porous border. That’s why border security must be accomplished first.

When it comes to immigration, we must continue to embrace our rich cultural heritage in New Mexico that welcomes legal immigrants. I strongly encourage the federal government to seriously debate and develop thoughtful solutions that not only embraces this heritage, but also respects our laws. In my opinion, the solution does not rest with amnesty that rewards those who have broken the law with a special pathway to citizenship that allows them to cut to the front of the immigration line. In principle, I believe we need a legal immigration process for those who are in this country now and wish to stay here that is practical, while at the same time does not invite the next wave of illegal immigrants. Simply legalizing every illegal immigrant in the country, as some have proposed, will only undermine our legal immigration process.

Martinez also pledged to revoke state-issued driver's licences from illegals and said she'd work to repeal the law that permitted their issuance in the first place.  This broad approach is both tough and sensible.  It's also forward-looking and shared by many Republicans.  Even as the nation and the party wrestle with the quandary of how to reform a broken immigration system, Martinez recognizes that a her preference for a "practical" and comprehensive strategy cannot even get off the ground unless the border is secure.  She explicitly rejects amnesty.  Emerging conservative leaders like Sen. Marco Rubio (and his efforts to build consensus around an amended DREAM Act) and Martinez will play crucial roles in helping the GOP articulate its positive message to America's burgeoning Hispanic population.  Liberals have an obvious interest in trying to drive a wedge between the Rubios of the world and the conservative base, which tends to favor more hard-line immigration policies.  (Incidentally, public support for Arizona's "draconian" immigration law remains very strong).  Conservatives shouldn't play along with this game.  Let's tackle border security first, then engage in a thoughtful and critical debate over how to reform the system in an equitable, compassionate and law-respecting manner.  Gov. Martinez supports this concept, so assertions that she's breaking ranks and backing amnesty simply are not accurate.  Parting thought: While it seems unlikely that this year's GOP nominee would pick another half-term female governor to be his running mate in the fall, the long knives are already being unsheathed -- just in case.  It's also entirely plausible that the Left is starting to feel threatened by a tough-on-crime, female, conservative Hispanic Governor from a blueish-purple state with a stunning 66 percent job approval rating.

The Sunday morning network chat shows typically distill and explore the major political themes of the week, with Republicans and Democrats grappling for narrative control.  This week's programs were no exception, and suffice it to say that the Obama campaign didn't have a very productive weekend.  Three of its surrogates strayed off message, handing the GOP a series of golden talking points:

(1) Former top economic adviser Austin Goolsbee admitted what we've known for some time: President Obama is the "undisputed Debt King."  Fox News Sunday's Chris Wallace laid down the facts, and Goolsbee could do nothing but stare the truth in its face:
 

Wallace: "The fact is, Mr. Goolsbee, that under this president, the debt has increased by five trillion dollars, or almost 50 percent."

Goolsbee: "Look, I don't dispute that the deficit has increased."

In an emailed statement to the media, the Romney campaign chuckled that "its nice to see that the president's campaign isn't disputing the facts, for once."  It's a backhanded compliment, of course, but I'm not sure how much credit Goolsbee really deserves.  Acknowledging empirical math shouldn't be a laudatory act; it should be  common practice.  Barack Obama has presided over an unprecedented (some might say "unpatriotic") bloating of the national debt and has institutionalized trillion-dollar-plus deficits, rupturing his early pledge to halve the annual deficit by now.  This reckless record of spending -- accompanied with unforgivable inaction on long term debt solutions -- is one of Mitt Romney's top indictments of the president.  Goolsbee's frank admission thus affirms a primary Republican election year message.

(2) In the wake of the Rev. Wright flap, David Axelrod was pressed on CNN to confirm that Gov. Romney's faith will be out of bounds throughout the coming campaign:
 

As religion becomes an ever-more significant issue on the campaign trail, Mitt Romney's Mormonism will be off-limits as a subject for the opposition, Obama campaign advisor David Axelrod said on Sunday. "We've said that's not fair game," he said on CNN's State of the Union. When asked whether the campaign "repudiate[s] the idea that Mormonism should be on the table" this election season, Axelrod insisted: "absolutely." He added, however, that Romney should to come out stronger against attacks on Obama's former pastor, Rev. Jeremiah Wright.

Some Obama allies haven't gotten this message -- two elected Democrats have made inflammatory statements about polygamy in recent weeks.  And as for Axelrod's gripe about Romney's reaction to the Wright reports, I'm not sure what else he could have done to satisfy Axe's repudiation thirst.   He came out and thoroughly rejected the hypothetical Wright attacks within hours, to the chagrin of some conservatives.  I guess he has to keep the gravy train chugging along somehow, right?

(3) Finally, Democratic Newark Mayor Cory Booker -- last seen participating in an Abbott and Costello routine with Chris Christie -- appeared on Meet the Press and totally cut the legs out from under Team Obama's Bain Capital demagoguery:
 

"If you look at the totality of Bain Capital's record, they've done a lot to support businesses to grow businesses, and this [Obama strategy] to me...I'm very uncomfortable with it."

In condemning The One's Bain strategy as "nauseating," Booker also made the point that public pension funds invest with companies like Bain to help secure strong retirement funds, dealing another blow to the silly notion that only Romney and his top deputies benefited from robust investment returns.  Recapping: Conceding Republican's valid criticisms on deficits and debt, taking Mormonism off the table, and praising Bain Capital's strong investment record.  What does that leave for Democrats to run on?  Perhaps the Washington Post should start digging into how Romney treated his pet goldfish in middle school.

UPDATE - Booker is back-tracking on his Bain defense, almost certainly at the behest of Team O:
 

People are describing that clip as a "hostage video."  Yeah, pretty close.  The RNC is circulating a "Stand with Cory" petition, just to rub it in.  Meanwhile, the Wall Street Journal asks the trenchant question in all of this: If Bain just devoured and destroyed companies, why are people still lining up to do business with them decades later?  Answer: Because the point of their business model is to save and grow businesses -- and they're damn good at it.

Allahpundit is incredulous.  I mean, what else can you be at this point?  Quick recap: Massachusetts Senate candidate Elizabeth Warren (D) listed herself as a Native American in a professional law directory for at least nine years, and still maintains that she is being truthful about her "identity."  Documents show that two of the Ivy League law schools that hired her excitedly touted her as a minority or faculty member -- though she now insists that her "ethnicity" played no role whatsoever in her hiring process.  Sure.  Much searing scrutiny, and several hilarious explanations later, we now know that there is zero evidence that Warren has any Native American lineage.  The only proof she's been able to offer is an anecdote about her grandfather having high cheekbones -- "like all the Indians do"(!) -- and the fact that she once contributed five recipes to a cookbook entitled, "Pow Wow Chow," in which she's listed as Cherokee.  I'm not kidding.  But here's the unreal shark jump...
 

Two of the possibly plagiarized recipes, said in the Pow Wow Chow cookbook to have been passed down through generations of Oklahoma Native American members of the Cherokee tribe, are described in a New York Times News Service story as originating at Le Pavilion, a fabulously expensive French restaurant in Manhattan. The dishes were said to be particular favorites of the Duke and Duchess of Windsor and Cole Porter.

The two recipes, “Cold Omelets with Crab Meat” and “Crab with Tomato Mayonnaise Dressing,” appear in an article titled “Cold Omelets with Crab Meat,” written by Pierre Franey of the New York Times News Service that was published in the August 22, 1979 edition of the Virgin Islands Daily News, a copy of which can be seen here. Ms. Warren’s 1984 recipe for Crab with Tomato Mayonnaise Dressing is a word-for-word copy of Mr. Franey’s 1979 recipe.

Mrs. Warren’s 1984 recipe for Cold Omelets with Crab Meat contains all four of the ingredients listed in Mr. Franey’s 1979 recipe in the exact same portion but lists five additional ingredients. More significantly, her instructions are virtually a word for word copy of Mr. Franey’s instructions from this 1979 article.

So this 0/32 "Native American" is even cribbing "family" recipes from the New York Times (!) news service and trying to pass them off as passed-down-through-the-years, authentic Cherokee fare?  The word 'pathetic' doesn't even begin to cover this material.  Questions: (1) What isn't she ripping off or lying about? (2) At what point do we discover that her real name is Nicole or something?  AP adds to the fun:
 

Among the ingredients for Crab with Tomato Mayonnaise Dressing: “Imported mustard,” Worcestershire sauce, cognac, and of course crab, all presumably readily available to a, er, 19th-century agrarian Cherokee settlement in Oklahoma.

Remember, she pointed the media to 'Pow Wow Chow' to, um, "substantiate" her heritage.  For the second time during this saga, I'm rendered speechless.  This is a full-fledged trainwreck, and Scotty Brown's camp is starting to solicit donations over it.  Go for it, man.  Two parting items, via our bud Mary Katharine Ham.  First, an inquiry for our legal beagle readers: If proven, is plagiarizing anything -- even recipes -- considered a serious academic violation?  Second, just enjoy this masterful piece of satire:
 

Care to guess how many bits edgy, brave, truth-to-power comedian Jon Stewart has done on this circus?  None.  I guess this whole thing just isn't funny.

Yesterday we published a small, newsworthy excerpt from my interview with Gov. Mitt Romney.  The political story of the day involved a quickly-scuttled plan by a conservative Super PAC to tie President Obama to his controversial pastor of 20 years, Rev. Jeremiah Wright, in a televised ad campaign.  In a serendipitous bit of timing, I was the first person who had the opportunity to ask the presumptive Republican presidential nominee what he thought of the report, and whether his campaign viewed Rev. Wright as "fair game" in the 2012 election.  Romney promptly repudiated a potential idea that a group over which he has no control might have been contemplating.  (Is this the new repudiation standard?  If so, when will Obama repudiate his own Super PAC for accepting $1 million from serial misogynist Bill Maher?)  But beyond the Wright news hook, my longer conversation with Romney was wide-ranging and worth a listen.  The full interview first aired on Hugh Hewitt's national radio show, which I guest hosted with Townhall alum Mary Katharine Ham last night.  In a web exclusive, here's the audio and transcript of our full exchange.  Topics include Wright, the president's failed budget, Europe and debt, attacks on Romney's private sector experience, and the Vice Presidential vetting process -- about which Romney was tight-lipped:
 

I was interested in this answer from Romney, which hit on a key campaign theme that I hope Republicans continue to exploit:
 

GB: I’d like to revisit the point you just made on entitlements, because I’m not sure if you saw this report, Governor, a few days ago in the Washington Post. Senator Tom Coburn, a Republican of Oklahoma, says that President Obama has appealed to him, and promised that in his second term, he would be prepared to really make serious progress on entitlement reform. Do you attach any credibility to that hypothetical?

MR: Well, it is interesting that the president has a lot of things to say to people behind the screen, that he’s not willing to say out in the open. And whether that’s President Medvedev of Russia, or whether it’s at his fundraisers, where apparently they take away cell phones from people who attend them so that there’s no recording of what he’s actually saying, or even to Senators. Look, I think it’s very hard to tell exactly what the president would do, other than by looking at his record in his first three and a half or four years. And we can see where he took the nation in these years. It’s a massive expansion of federal spending, an expansion of the reach of the federal government, and there’s no question in my mind but that his Supreme Court nominees and his policies would be designed toward expanding the role of government in our lives. And frankly, America’s economy runs on freedom. And he has been attacking economic freedom from the first day he came into office.

I think this is an excellent argument to present to the American people.  If President Obama has been willing to defy public opinion on big ticket items like Obamacare, even knowing that he still has to face voters again, what will be feel "flexible" to do in an unaccountable second term?  As Romney points out, Obama's been doing quite a lot of private whispering on this front.  What are his genuine intentions, and do voters want to give him the chance to act on them?  Important questions.  (Also note Romney's cagey reference to Supreme Court vacancies, of which there will likely be several over the next four years.  That should be reason enough for hesitant conservatives to move heaven and earth to help elect Romney).  The former Massachusetts Governor's focus on the shroud of mystery surrounding a potential Obama second term also synthesizes nicely with his campaign's first television ad of the cycle.  Dan wrote it up earlier, but it's worth re-posting here.  The spot is upbeat and positive, offering a preview of day one of a Romney administration.  More jobs, increased energy independence, flatter taxes, and replacing Obamacare?  Yes, please:
 

This ad is slated to air in four battleground states: Iowa, North Carolina, Ohio, and Virginia.

In an exclusive interview with Townhall, presumptive Republican presidential nominee Mitt Romney rebuked a conservative group that is reportedly planning to assail President Obama over his 20-year relationship with controversial Chicago pastor Rev. Jeremiah Wright:
 

"I repudiate the effort by that PAC to promote an ad strategy of the nature they've described.  I would like to see this campaign focus on the economy, on getting people back to work, on seeing rising incomes and growing prosperity -- particularly for those in the middle class of America.  And I think what we've seen so far from the Obama campaign is a campaign of character assassination.  I hope that isn't the course of this campaign. So in regards to that PAC, I repudiate what they're thinking about ... It's interesting that we're talking about some Republican PAC that wants to go after the president [on Wright]; I hope people also are looking at what he's doing, and saying 'why is he running an attack campaign?  Why isn't he talking about his record?'"

Romney added that his campaign will release its first general election television ad in the coming days, which he described as "positive" in nature.  With his comments on the re-emergence of Rev. Wright as a factor in a presidential campaign, the former Massachusetts Governor has aligned his stance with that of Sen. John McCain, who refused to touch the issue in 2008.  The full interview with Gov. Romney will first air on today's edition of the nationally-syndicated Hugh Hewitt radio program.